


Like Steps on a Ladder

by Lohrendrell



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types, Wiedźmin | The Witcher Series - Andrzej Sapkowski
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Author tried the hardest to not make this spoilery, Book: Pani Jeziora | The Lady of the Lake, Canon Related, Dreams, Dreams vs. Reality, Gen, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Multi, Prophetic Dreams, but does contain elements of the book
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:20:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27791425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lohrendrell/pseuds/Lohrendrell
Summary: It is said the Lady of the Lake lives in the quieter moments of the night. It is said she answers to no one’s calling. She appears at her own volition, a ghost of vengeance, an angel of death.She comes to him in his dreams. She tells him, “I’m not frightened by you any longer.”
Relationships: Angoulême & Cahir Mawr Dyffryn aep Ceallach, Cahir Mawr Dyffryn aep Ceallach & Cirilla Fiona Ellen Riannon
Comments: 21
Kudos: 18
Collections: The Witcher Flash Fic Challenge #011





	Like Steps on a Ladder

**Author's Note:**

> I FINALLY WROTE CAHIR AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH

The spillway gates under Lette Bridge open slowly. The waterfall it creates fills up the lower portion of the river, following through until the outskirts of the city of Dun Dâre. The structure is such a massive thing Cahir can see it from afar, at the rooftop of the building where he works. It would be dreadfully deafening too, probably, if he were a bit closer.

What he sees on the horizon is only part of the ensemble of structures that go all the way down to the ocean. The Pereplut Falls guide the excess of water carried by the rivers Lette, Velda, and Arete in the monsoon season, gallons and gallons of water redirected by clever engineering, like steps on a ladder, all the way to the ocean. It’s one of the Continent’s monumental beauties, or so they say; Cahir hasn’t had the time to go sightseeing yet.

The Pereplut Falls are the apples of Dun Dâre’s citizens’ eyes, a sentiment he doesn’t really get. How come pride, of all things, be the response to synthetic waterfalls, to conscious interference that drastically changed—obliterated—the swamps the region was once known for?

Dun Dâre is a strange city, but then again, Cahir hasn’t even gotten used to working on the top floor of a skyscraper.

Perhaps he is just overwhelmed.

“Ehh,” Angoulême says by his side when Cahir reveals his thoughts, “I’ve seen weirder cities. 

“If you say so.”

He sips at his tea before it gets cold. It’s another thing demanding conscious efforts to assimilate: the weather here is nothing like the vibrant warmth of Vicovaro, where light breezes don’t smell like the sea at all, but like citronella, planted everywhere to keep mosquitoes away.

“What, are there no constructions where you’re from? No skyscrapers, no bridges, nothing?”

“I’m not from the woods,” Cahir says, to which Angoulême laughs. He gestures towards Lette Bridge. “There’s just nothing like these giant things.”

“Well, fear not, country boy. I’ll keep you safe in this jungle of concrete.”

His lips tuck upwards involuntarily; Cahir doesn’t contain the smile. “Thank you,” he says, sincere.

Angoulême rolls her eyes. “Come on,” she says, getting up and heading to the staircase leading back inside the building and to their respective jobs. “Our lunch break is over and you don’t want to get fired in your first month.”

Cahir follows her.

*

The floor is his bed, his table for meals, his privy when he can’t hold on anymore. He has only rats for company, and he’s been letting them eat more than him, but maybe he should stop—it’s been attracting more of them.

There is a broken tile on the roof. The raining season hasn’t quite arrived yet, but it’s already drizzling everyday. The moisture in the crack on the roof drips steadily, a soothing routine at first, but now unbearable.

_Drip, drip, drip_ —a guard comes to replace yesterday’s leftover meal. It’s all they’ve been giving him, but he’s still glad. At least he isn’t being tortured yet. Perhaps he should start planning an escape for when they decide to do that.

*

It is said the Lady of the Lake lives in the quieter moments of the night. It is said she answers to no one’s calling. She appears at her own volition, a ghost of vengeance, an angel of death.

She comes to him in his dreams. She tells him, “I’m not frightened by you any longer.”

His alarm clock flares up before Cahir can ask why would she ever be.

*

“The Lady of the Lake?” Angoulême asks. “Psshhh, stories. Just stories people tell, country boy.”

*

Perhaps— _drip_ —everything is wrong. _Drip_. Perhaps it has always— _drip_ —been wrong. Perhaps he doesn’t exist at all.

 _Drip, drip, drip_ —he’s going crazy.

He feeds the rats.

*

“Now, are you more of a sword or more of an axe guy?”

“Neither. I’m not much of a fighter.”

Angoulême shuffles through the magazine before finishing the quiz—she’s an impatient little thing, he’s noticed.

“I think I’d be a barbarian,” she says as she reads the results.

“A barbarian?”

“Mmhmm. Walking around with an axe and some daggers, killing people if they so much look at me weird? That’s the life, man! I’d do whatever I wanted, no fucks given, and die in battle as a good bloodthirsty barbarian shall do.”

Cahir feels his eyes watering; he can’t control it before he says, “No. You live. You must.”

Angoulême shoots him a startled, strange look—dammit, he’s doing it again, isn’t he?

“Chill, dude. It’s just a stupid quiz. It’s not real.”

Cahir wants to ask _what even is real?_ He always had trouble telling.

He slurps his strawberry juice instead, focusing on shunning those thoughts away, and hoping beyond hope it’s not the last Angoulême will talk to old weirdo him.

*

He doesn’t know why he is the way he is. He only knows he’s always been like this.

His mother used to cradle him in her lap and tell him, “You’re special. You can do anything you set your mind to.”

Even when he was five, Cahir knew he only wanted to stay young, cradled in her lap forever.

“Except that,” his mother had said, but there was no bite in her tone, no scorn. “Anything else you set your mind to. Anything else is yours to take.”

*

“I don’t want the whole world,” Cahir tells one of the rats. The creature is dining on stale bread and Cahir is on the other side of the cell, shielding himself from the downpour leaking through the roof with the blanket given to him. “I only want a small portion of peace.”

*

Angoulême is on the rooftop, smoking.

“I thought they had forbidden that.”

“Fuck them. Ooh, what is that?”

Cahir hands her one of the twin lunch boxes. He’s frowning. “I made sandwiches. You really shouldn’t be smoking here when it’s forbidden.”

“Bite me, Cahir.”

“You don’t want to risk your internship—”

“I’m not an intern.”

“I thought—are you—of course you are.”

“I’m no one’s intern.”

“Angie, you’re hired here as an intern.”

“I’m no one’s intern,” Angoulême insists. “I’m no one’s aide, a piece of paper won’t change that.”

Cahir’s head is spinning, the corners of his lips pursed in concern.

Angoulême sighs heavily. “Fine, fine. Here.” She puts out the cigarette by stepping on it. “Better now?”

“Thank you. I just—I. I worry—”

“It’s alright, baby boy. I did it for the sandwich.” She grins, and eats a chunk of the sandwich with a large bite. She is the opposite of charming, but her mannerisms are soothing, somehow.

They don’t talk much as they eat their lunch. Angoulême doesn’t clean up the mess she did on the floor with the cigarette, but Cahir doesn’t say anything.

*

He dreams of a world he doesn’t recognize—heavy monsters of concrete, waterfalls under a bridge like steps on a ladder.

He dreams of a helmet decorated with the wings of a bird of prey.

He dreams of a girl with hallucinogenic powder in her nostrils and blood in her teeth. It drips from her wicked smile, down to her chin, staining the floor. She dances and she laughs. She kisses and she grins, not at him, not at anyone, and he knows, he _knows_ she would murder him on sight, and enjoy it.

She frightens him.

When he wakes up in the morning, the smell of coffee in his coffee machine makes him nauseous.

*

“You need to escape,” the rat tells him as it feeds in his stale bread.

“I don’t know how,” Cahir confesses.

*

She comes to him at night, with her dark hair and round, cunning eyes.

He asks, “Are you the Lady of the Lake?”

“Yes,” she says, “not yours.”

*

Poetry. Hollow, follow, swallow. Follow the poet. Find the swallow. He’s hollow, he can’t follow. Let me follow, please, let me follow.

“What the fuck are you typing?”

Cahir startles, turning around in his chair to see Angoulême leaning over him, watching his screen with interest.

“Is that a fucking poem?” She laughs.

“Don’t laugh,” he says, embarrassed, and she laughs harder.

“I didn’t know you had it in you.”

“Go away.”

“You should write more. I’m sure I can sell it. Your… whatever that is, with my entrepreneurship talents? We’ll be rich in no time at all!”

Cahir frowns, wonders if that is something he wants.

“Hey, country boy.” She punches lightly at his shoulder, that way she does when she’s trying to show affection. “It was just a joke, no need to brood.”

“I’m not.”

A sigh. “Fine, fine, whatever. I’m here to see if you finished the petition our boss asked you to.”

“Yes. I’ll send it to your email.”

“Nice. Hey, some snacks and drinks after work tonight? My treat.”

He can’t help the smile creeping up his face. “Is that your way of apologizing?”

“I don’t apologize. For anything. Ever.”

“Sure.”

“Well?”

“I don’t drink.”

“Whatever the fucking hell do you do? You don’t do anything! A fucking water, then. Or strawberry juice.”

“Your treat?”

“Yes, dammit. Say yes and end my suffering!”

*

He dreams of afternoons in the woods. Of training in the grounds of his grandfather’s estate, a boy filled with certainties and dreams.

His companion says, “What a nice moment.”

He answers, “What would you know?”

“I would.”

“You’re just a rat.”

“I would.”

“And I wouldn’t?”

“I would.”

His rodent friend leaves through a crack in the wall. He flees to where Cahir can’t follow.

*

“Do you ever feel like you’re living in a delirium?”

“Yeah,” Angoulême answers, belching loudly after a large gulp of beer. “When I’m high as the almighty fuck.”

*

“Do you know your purpose?”

He has studied in the best schools his parents’ money could afford. He has applied himself, has done his best. He comes from a quiet, simple life in the rural side of Vicovaro, and yet, here he is, in a good position in one of the most prestigious law firms in the entire Continent.

His parents always encouraged him.

“Do you know your purpose?” The Lady of the Lake—not his—asks in his dreams.

Words fail him.

*

When they come to him at last, Cahir braces himself for the fate of a traitor. Only he and the gods know the truths, but Nilfgaard only knows one god, and he thinks Cahir betrayed him.

He has prepared for this.

The crack in the wall was too small to escape.

What happens, instead, is a reinstate. He isn’t sure he quite understands why.

They tell him, “You have a mission.”

Find the Lion Cub of Cintra.

They tell him, “Don’t fuck this up.”

He understands why he doesn’t meet the guillotine. Only he knows how to complete this mission.

It’s a second chance. It means restoring his and his family’s honor. It means reconquering a seat in the Imperator’s well-guarded trust.

It means freedom.

They say, “Officer,” and Cahir takes the new stylized helmet, decorated with the wings of a bird of prey.

*

She comes to him in the false waterfall in the spillway. Not an innocent, wide-eyed child, watching him with terror in her tears, but a woman, whole despite her cracked skull, the scar in her cheek, the blood and the suffering spilling out in waves of melancholy.

She is untouchable by her own volition, and he doesn’t dare to move.

She tells him, “I’m not afraid of you.”

He wants to beg, “Let me follow you,” but it comes out as, “Don’t kill me.”

She eyes him with contempt. Shame bubbles up inside him, the shame of having hurt someone irreversibly, and his hand hurts so bad.

“I’m sorry,” he says, “let me help you.”

“You can’t help me.”

*

He sleeps on the forest floor, alone, discouraged. He has a trail and some food he stole from an anonymous corpse. It would be rotting in the remains of a battlefield otherwise. He also stole his clothes.

He closes his eyes, and wishes for the dreams he had in the prison cell. Wishes for deliriousness, because then, at least, there was no fear. There was only nonsense.

It is frightening, he thinks, to be lonesome.

She must be trembling in fear, too.

*

She comes to him at the dead of the night.

“Tell me how you helped her.”

“What?” he asks, lungs failing when she straddles his hips. It’s not The Lady of the Lake, the one who isn’t his, nor the one who isn’t no one’s.

“Tell me how you helped her,” she repeats. Her weight on his thighs is not erotic, but his body, unaccustomed with the touches of another, betrays him.

“Tell me,” she repeats, over and over, leaning down over him. Her light brown hair cascades down the sides of her face; he’s a blank canvas, pinned to the mattress by the soft curls framing him.

“Tell me.”

“I-I d-don’t know,” he stammers. “I don’t even know her.”

“I know you from the writings that survived. I know how you live; I know how you die. You must know.”

“I don’t know her,” he insists. “I don’t understand you.”

“When the time comes,” she says, “follow them.”

Her words are whispers. He isn’t quite sure he hears them.

She says, “The archer, the poet, the father. They will show you the way.”

Her lips brush slightly on his. 

She says, “When the time comes, follow the ladders to The Lady of the Lake. Find the skeleton with pale eyes. Save her. End him.”

Cahir has never touched a sword in his entire life. “Yes,” he promises. “I’ll protect her with my life.”

“You did,” she assures him, her smart, gentle fingertips undressing him with ease. “You will.”

“What about you?” he asks, breathlessly.

“I know my purpose.”

He flips them out, pins her body down with his own weight.

*

“The Lady of Time and Space knows no frontiers,” he proclaimed, sagely, suddenly.

Angoulême throws a handful of popcorn at him. “Stop with your nonsense bullshit out of nowhere.” She laughs.

*

“What is your purpose?” The Lady of the Lake asks.

Cahir has only ever offered her the utmost sincerity. He says, “I don’t have one.”

“Pox on it. Everyone does.”

“I don’t.”

“Then find one.”

*

“I want to watch something scary,” Angoulême decides, picking up the remote control without asking for permission, fiddling with it in search of the perfect movie for the evening.

Cahir has the sudden urge to tell her, “Thank you for being my friend.”

Angoulême gives him one of those strange looks he’s growing used to, but it quickly shifts into one of her cockish smirks.

“Of course you must thank me! I’m pretty awesome, you should be thanking the gods for having me in your life.”

They are a pair of lonely souls stripped out of their home by alienating forces, too innocent to realize what was going on, and too stubborn to perish while it happened.

He doesn’t know how he knows this.

The following weekend, Angoulême invites herself to his apartment, picks a shitty action movie (her words), and curls up with him on the sofa. It’s raining outside, but there’s no incessant dripping sound.

*

Cahir dreams of a coffin. He’s inside of it.

Someone says, “Let him accompany us,” to which the answer is no.

He despairs. _No! Let me follow you!_

They mock him for his misplacement in life. Rain droplets burn his eyes. They leave him to die face-first in what he truly is: a lonesome failure, an outcast.

He wakes with lungs shut down.

He trashes on the floor. The bedsheets are tentacles wrapping around him, trying to sink him even further, drowning him.

Angoulême is somehow by his side. “Cahir, Cahir,” she calls, “it’s okay, it’s nothing, you’re okay.”

He begs, feverish, “Let me follow you.” He tells her, “Without you I have no purpose,” and there it is again: that strange expression Angoulême gives him every time he acts like… like his true self.

“It was a dream,” she says finally.

*

When she comes to him at last, it’s on the ladders made of waterfalls. It’s with a unicorn. It’s with a swollen scar in her cheek.

He is floating in the air. Cold steam surrounds them, the soft drizzle pokes him in the eye, blurring his vision of the decorative lights in the horizon.

She doesn’t ask him for help, even though despair paints her face all over.

He tells her, “This is not your place. Nor your time,” because it’s true.

It wounds her, and that wounds him. He wants to hide her away in Vicovaro, where trees protect you from the sun and the house smells of citronella in the night. He wants to protect her, atone for all the sins of a him that isn’t him.

“You must remember,” he says, and he’s freezing in the snow, but he doesn’t know if she can see it. “Remember where you’re from.”

“I don’t know how.”

“Remember your time and your place.”

“I don’t know how!” She gets angry so easily—at him more than anyone else, he knows.

“I don’t know, either,” he confesses. He offers, “Follow the sound of love. Follow the smell of despair. Remember the cold, and you’ll find those who’ve been fighting to find you.”

“You speak nonsense,” The Lady of the Lake says, at the same time the other Lady of the Lake, the one who isn’t his, yells, “I see you!” She guides her, “Here!”

They disappear into the night, through somewhere, in some way he can’t follow. Cahir can hear a faint, “Thank you,” not directed at him.

He is left behind on the cold steam of the synthetic waterfalls.

He watches the city lights on the horizon, the elegant display of the apple of this city’s eyes. It occurs to him, for some reason, that they’re approaching Saovine; the lights will be changed soon.

He thinks, _Dun Dâre is such a strange city_.


End file.
